How to manage time is a challenge that almost all CEOs face, particularly at startups where there are a lot of different fires that need putting out. The distinction between some of the best CEOs observed and the mediocre ones are not necessarily that they carry out various tasks in different ways, but rather that they do so in various ratios. This is comparable to the idea in finance where judgments about asset allocation frequently take priority over choices about individual investments. The best CEOs also frequently make better choices on their own, but simply knowing how to manage one’s time can be quite beneficial.

Warning: There are no quick fixes or simple solutions.

Fundamentally, startup CEOs use their time in four different ways:

Although short-term variances are caused by day-to-day and weekly occurrences, the following is a general “asset allocation” for time:

1. Building the right team

Three things are required to create the perfect team: retention, development, and recruitment. Arguably, this is the CEO’s most crucial task.

You need to be able to clearly communicate both a vision worth pursuing and a position worth taking in order to attract the greatest talent. You are constantly hiring and considering new approaches to add top talent to your staff. Once in the team, you must also empower everyone to thrive by developing them.

Kayak’s founder and serial entrepreneur Paul English is renowned for his aggressive hiring practices. He aims for the best talent and doesn’t let obstacles prevent him from pursuing them.

English, who makes the joke that his title should be chief talent officer, chooses applicants by asking coworkers or acquaintances to nominate the smartest, quickest, and most influential people they know.

“They will claim that you can’t hire that person because he is already retired, rich, busy with something else, or directly employed by Bill Gates. Just give me his name, I’m like “stated in English. “As soon as they say his or her name, it’s like my world fades to black and white and that individual is in color,” the speaker said.

For a company to succeed, finding the correct initial set of personnel is vitally essential. What kind of people will the company be able to attract if the first 10 employees are not all-stars? The saying “you’re the average of the five individuals you spend the most time with” may have come to your attention. It’s also possible that your business is only as good as the average of the previous five hires. It seems doubtful that the average would ever increase if you lack the necessary early talent base.

2. Setting the right strategy/vision

Even if a firm has the most resources and the best employees, it will still fall off a cliff if the CEO adopts the incorrect vision or establishes the wrong plan.

Many low-level decisions that are actually more tactical than strategic will be made early on that the CEO will be involved with. The CEO doesn’t benefit much from delegation with a small workforce. A CEO delegated to those smart, capable employees he has been hiring as the company grew. A rational plan that keeps the business on track and aligned must be in place throughout the entire process.

In the military, one learns how to battle one street at a time and work in tiny teams at the tactical level. If extremely successful over the course of a career spanning 25+ years, that individual may eventually be promoted to the rank of General, where he is expected to be an expert in big organizations, grand strategy, and generalization (hence the rank). The parallel is the same in a startup; one must learn the early blocking and tackling necessary to launch a company before becoming the generalist in charge of a somewhat complex organization. As opposed to a CEO of a rapidly expanding firm, who has far less time, a military member may have 25 years of training and expertise to make that move. Another distinction is that training to become an organizational leader takes years of commitment and dedication in the military. In a startup, the CEO must mostly do things on his own while daily leading the organization in a fight.

Therefore, a CEO should be able to make a lot of early tactical decisions as well as delegate and motivate a developing business with a plan and vision. A CEO’s success at both the seed stage and the late stage is rare because both require different skill sets. CEOs that are skilled in both are hard to find.

Finally, it should be realized that developing the proper approach and expressing it is both an art and a science. Some people might be excellent communicators but poor strategists, or vice versa. A CEO who is successful must excel in both areas.

3. Not running out of money

Brilliant staff and a winning plan should make it simpler to avoid running out of money, but a CEO isn’t always afforded this luxury. Early on, the team’s resources are relatively constrained, and while a sound plan aids, it is merely a theoretical one. The ability of a company to raise capital and the CEO’s credibility are frequently interchangeable since investors are investing in the CEO more than anything else.

If a business runs out of money, it won’t be able to find, cultivate, and keep excellent talent or carry out a fantastic strategy. Early on, the financial focus is frequently on generating money to ensure financial stability, but eventually, the emphasis switches to actual profit. In either scenario, everything is lost if the CEO is unable to maintain the business funded.

One could question why I included an “other” category, but I believe it’s crucial to do so because it’s a silent, unglamorous time waster. In the early stages, a CEO handles a lot of “other” tasks simply because there is no one else to do it and the firm cannot afford to hire someone to do it. These cover tasks like bookkeeping, contract drafting, NDA review, office space search, wifi setup, garbage removal, coffee order, bill payment, etc. This list might get too long and cumbersome. It can be tempting to spend a lot of time doing the things on this list because they are all simple to complete on their own and will make you feel like you are making progress. This is a dangerous trap.

As Noam Bardin, founder of Waze highlighted:

I used to be a very micromanaging CEO, agonizing and involving myself in everything from what coffee flavor to order to negotiating with an office vendor. Since a startup is such a small unit, everything matters and one can easily explain their involvement only in tasks they’re comfortable doing since those tasks (and every other one) are classified as ‘important’. What I learned at Waze was to ignore the things that were not the most important thing at that time. It could drive me crazy that too much money was being wasted on the wrong coffee beans, that a process was not efficient or that our website sucked but once I learned to focus on the most important thing, ignoring these things made sense and the organization’s capacity grew dramatically.

When there are only two or three team members, the CEO must devote a lot of time to the “other” category because it will always exist. Since many CEOs are perfectionists, it can be difficult for them to let go of projects that they know will not be completed to their standards. Therefore, knowing when to let go is a crucial skill. According to Reid Hoffman’s Masters of Scale podcast:

You’ll just exhaust yourself if you try to put out every fire. The top businesspeople? They left fires to burn. Just as important as knowing which problems must be solved is recognizing which problems not to tackle.

What happens to time management as a startup expands

The development of the four aforementioned categories in a startup’s life cycle is depicted in the model below, which has been greatly simplified.

Patterns to be aware of:

Customers, investors, and employees must all be able to buy into a CEO’s value proposition and appealing vision. So a CEO is a mix of a recruiter, a thinker, and a salesperson. They assist in assembling and leading the proper team, with the proper plan, and with enough funding.